So a higher minimum wage means that employees feel less of a debt of reciprocity to employers and that employers need to raise their wages if they want to further motivate employees?

As a social democrat, I find that to be an argument in favor raising the minimum wage. If employers want more productivity, they can pay for it rather than getting by pointing out that there are other employers that are even greater skinflints than them.

It seems like you can both blame corruption for much of poverty and also note that Westerners’ actions aren’t as conducive to ending poverty as they could be. The waste isn’t about food left on kids plates; it’s about luxury consumption. Or, alternately, it’s about the labor that’s devoted to facilitating luxury consumption.

Francis’s critique isn’t so much anti-capitalist as anti-consumerist. And he has a point.

Is it fair to say that corruption is the main reason people are in poverty? Is that why, say, Portugal was poor in 1970, or South Korea was in 1930 or 1965? China and India haven’t eliminated corruption, but they have pulled millions out of poverty.

I agree with this one “Democracy works because it fires people who produce bad outcomes”. At fireflightuas.com we are not just thinking about UAV and Public Safety, we are deploying them. This blog post is doing a great service to the industry and we applaud you.

Again, richao, I don’t have any response except to note how completely and utterly inaccurate it was to imply, as you do, that the goal of expanding access to health care among the uninsured was somehow snuck in behind other concerns. Like I said, and proved, the ACA was put before the American people as a way to expand access to care, control the precipitous (yet ineffective) rise of health care spending, and deal with the various problems faced by many with regards to their private health insurance. Is it perfect at doing all those things? Of course not, it’s the product of legislative compromise between the legitimate concerns of a number of stakeholders. But the perfect solution – where “perfect” includes the actual possibility of successfully passing legislation – has, so far, eluded all minds that have approached the issue.

@Chet: What exactly do you think I was describing as extremely misleading? Nothing in that statement contradicts your view – which is also mine – that “The ACA was always sold as, among other things, a way to increase American’s access to health care – particularly among those who couldn’t afford it, were locked out of the insurance market due to pre-existing conditions, etc.” I never denied that was the case, and even you admit that increased access was not the entire argument. What I was describing as extremely misleading was the particular argument that was used to sell reform, including for example the following claim, which appears in the same Obama speech you quoted and which I described in the passage you excerpted:

“Then there’s the problem of rising costs. We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on healthcare than any other country, but we aren’t any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It’s why so many employers – especially small businesses – are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely.”

Later in the speech, he goes on to suggest that it’s entirely possible to contain costs without affecting the quality of care and to assert that those who like their coverage will be able to keep it. My argument above was that the specific argument used to sell reform was misleading. Nobody disputes the assertions made in your excerpt from the president’s speech (except perhaps some quibbling about the numbers of uninsured), but other key elements of his sales pitch were, in my view. I provide evidence to support this view (which you’ve not bothered to contradict). And I think it’s indisputable that health care reform would not have passed if supporters had not assured Americans that access could be expanded without disturbing current arrangements for those who had health insurance and that they could get the same health care for significantly less money. Selling them solely on increased access would not have garnered majority support, particularly if those with insurance thought that their own health coverage would be jeopardized or made more expensive by the bill.